Lions Clubs Come and Go

By: Veronica Leighton

 

Our very active Filipino American community in Chicago can boast of its distinct personality in participating and exerting its eff orts to support and help our community through its sincere dedication when joining any humanitarian organizations, such as the venerable Lions Clubs International.

The Lions Clubs International (LCI) is an international non-political service organization established originally in 1917 in Chicago, Illinois, by Melvin Jones. It is now headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois. As of January 2020, it had over 46,000 local clubs and more than 1.4 million members (including the youth wing Leo) in more than 200 countries around the world (including the Philippines, of course, wherein a respectable Lions Club membership is looked up with seriousness, dignity and honor).

LCI’s purpose is to organize, charter and supervise service clubs to be known as Lions clubs under certain districts. Every Lions club in the district shares the common MISSION of empowering volunteers to serve their communities, meet humanitarian needs, encourage peace and promote international understanding through Lions clubs.

The Lions Club VISION statement is “To be the global leader in community and humanitarian service”. Its Motto is “To Serve.” The most popular Lions Foundation mission HELPING THE BLIND, strengthening eye care systems, enabling them to fi ght blindness and vision loss and assisting those who are blind or visually impaired. They can protect a village from a debilitating eye disease, or intervene before someone goes blind due to diabetic eye disease. SightFirst grants can help a child see the world for the fi rst time. LCIF’s other services are varied that involve hospice care, education, cancer treatment, etc.

Having been an active Lioness club member in the 1970’s and proudly served as its president at one time under CPLC (Chicago Philippine Lions Club, the fi rst and oldest local Filipino Lions Club in District 1-A), I can honestly say that I am familiar with Lion member duties and obligations. So proud to say too that our club during my administration had done some superb fundraising projects and had donated so much funds to the LCIF.

Through the years, during that “olden”time and the current “digitalized” time, our community is still a woke community for the Lions humanitarian service per se, though we’ve seen its ebbs and lows at times. This is not actually surprising as humanitarian service aff ects the other local communities and districts due to the changing times. Currently, our community prides itself of about 11 or 12 active chartered Lions clubs, according to District 1-A Region 2 Chairperson and a longstanding Lion member, Ben Zoleta. He had also served as the Guiding Lion for the now-defunct Magnificent Lions Club that we are reporting about below.

We must remember that every Lion joins the club because they are interested in providing service, a common bond for Lions members. A noble deed indeed, but in reality, some decent Lions clubs face some obstacles to survive due to reasons of dwindling membership, poor leadership, changing economic times, migration, politics within the organization, and other human reasons, resulting to the dissolution of the club sometimes.

Sad to report here that there is one particular Lions club in our community named Magnifi cent Lions Club whose sudden dissolution has brought raised eyebrows among some members of our community lately. Chartered in 2015 and started out as a very active club with its various social fundraising activities under the “magnifi cent” leadership of Charter President Jet Jet Gruezo (now Rome), it had attracted quite a large number of membership in its earlier days but has been marked later on by its dwindling membership, disillusionment, bickerings, and to top it all, rumors about the disappearance of club funds. Finger-pointing has ensued among some members that included Charter President Gruezo-Rome, Treasurer Alicia Monk and past Treasurer Edwin Pineda. Plus, there are some Million $$$ questions that need to be answered… How and why was the club dissolved without the necessary formal dissolution meeting among the board members? How much money was in the club funds when it was dissolved and turned over to the LCIF? Was there any transaction receipt or accounting reports for the membership to see? Why was there a credit card opened and used reportedly under the name of the Magnifi cent Lions Club? Where and when was it used, and by whom? Was it solely used for the club’s functions? Was the credit card use legit under the LCI’s rules and regulations on charter clubs or was it considered a fraud?

At this point in time, we must hear some logical explanations to come out directly from the horses’ mouths, that is, from the club president and treasurer/s,for the sake of our community and of the venerable Lions Club International. Till then!

Columnist’s Note: Due to our printer’s deadline, we are forced to cut down this interesting story about the now-defunct Magnifi cent Lions Club, its history of magnificence and its glory, through its demise, in our July issue.